


Whatever

by ZeNami



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Debate spoilers, Gen, Headcanon, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 11:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1686170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZeNami/pseuds/ZeNami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus Vansten is a callous bastard, most people say. They wouldn't be wrong--he doesn't care about much, except his money, and that coffee table. But most people don't know about the dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whatever

_Money can’t buy happiness._  
  
To hell with that, Marcus had thought. To hell with it. He’d prove it wrong, sooner or later. Somewhere in his games of stock, and carbon, and winding his clever fingers through the system to put himself on top of a mountain of gold, he would prove it wrong. Money could buy happiness. Money could buy anything. That’s what it was for. That was why he had so damn much of it.  
  
He’d never been happy with anything else. He hadn’t been happy being nobody. He hadn’t been happy growing up making dinner for himself because his parents couldn’t be bothered to come home before one in the morning. He hadn’t been happy in university, breezing through economics and business school and coasting on scholarships that let him walk out of the building with a nearly free diploma. It was all just… noise. It was white noise to occupy his mind while he was searching for whatever it was that would make him feel like he…  
  
… Whatever.  
  
Money, at least, made him smile. Marcus thought himself a bit of a vagabond; he’d gotten to a point in his life where most of what he did was done on a whim. He never put a lot of thought into it, but he tried a lot of things. A lot of different things. Maybe, subconsciously, he thought he would stumble across some great secret to fulfillment in there somewhere—somewhere between the eccentricities and extravagant spending. But mostly, he just found himself attracted to the _colour_ of it.  
  
Gold. He loved it; there was something about the shine in a 21-karat chain that… _reminded_ him of something. A memory he couldn’t quite grasp, tickling the edge of his awareness. He chased it. He surrounded himself with it—symbols of wealth, proof of his fortune. He had it lining his staircases, his bathtubs, his fireplaces and swimming pools and display cases full of interesting collected antiquities… he wore it all over himself, in the trim of his shirt, in the soles of his shoes, in the rings adorning his warm brown hands. He was drawn to it, it seemed. He never fully understood why.  
  
Did it matter?  
  
Did _anything_ , really?  
  
Sometimes, he thought it did. Maybe. Times like tonight, he would be sprawled in the Egyptian cotton sheets of his bed, partially thrown from his body in the early evening heat that still lingered, even with his air conditioning burning Ben Franklins in his favourite penthouse. He would be snoring softly, devoid of clothing, his jet-black hair still damp from the bath.  
  
And he would dream.  
  
Often, Marcus’s dreams were frivolous. Often, they made very little sense; fairly often, they would be nothing more than messages issued by the City Council via brainwave manipulation, as they were wont to do when it was particularly important that the news not be remembered. But there was one dream that Marcus had over and over again. Not every night—but every once in a while. He’d had this dream for a long time, and it was always the same.  
  
Marcus would dream that he stood alone in the desert; it stretched on forever around him, and there was nothing but the sand under his bare feet and hot air in his lungs and in his hair. He could feel it touch his skin, trailing in wisps over his arms like billows of silk. And the sun was bright, beating down. He had to squint. He had to squint until his vibrant green eyes closed and he winced, covering his face with his forearm.  
  
Something would touch his arm; ever so gently. It was so soft that he almost thought it to be nothing more than a wash of air—but then it wasn’t, and the edges of his vision were slowly filled up with gold, rustling faintly.  
  
 _“Marcus…”_  
  
A soft voice; a whisper. Equally soft down brushed his skin, and he saw feathers—hundreds of  golden feathers—enveloping him, almost cradling him. He would try to look up, lower his arm, trying to see the face of something in front of him. But it was so bright. It was so _bright_ , and his eyes would water…  
  
… and then Marcus would wake alone, sprawled on his bed, in tears.  
  
Each time, Marcus would sit up shivering, breathing slowly, heavily; he would draw his palm across his eyes and then pinch the bridge of his nose, leaning over his lap as his shoulders trembled. He didn’t know if he hated these dreams, or feared them, or…  
  
“Whatever,” he would mutter to himself, sniffling heavily and clearing his throat. “Just… whatever.”  
  
He would stagger to his feet and step into the en-suite bathroom just to look at himself in the mirror—a mirror ringed in gold—and he would pool cold water in both cold hands, splashing it into his face and rubbing at it slowly. He would stare at himself, and wait until his eyes were no longer red, until his face dried, until there was no more trace of whatever this… this was. Until he felt exhaustion tugging at him again. And he would text Jake to tell him to give him an extra two hours of sleep that morning, to delay his appointments and plans.  
  
Not that they mattered.  
  
Marcus would lie awake in bed, too exhausted to stand, too aware to sleep. And he would stare at the ceiling, or the mirror above him, depending on the bed—wondering what it meant. Wondering if it meant anything at all. Wishing it meant nothing at all, when all he really wanted was _meaning_. Was that what irony was? Or was it simply self-defeating?  
  
 _… Whatever._  
  
He would fall asleep sooner or later. He was never one to pursue such a complex thing; he was far too lazy for that. Perhaps, if he waited long enough, whatever he was meant for would simply fall into his lap, like everything else. He was used to that. He expected it.  
  
But he was too tired of waiting to care.  


**Author's Note:**

> special thanks to MindfulWrath for beta-reading this for me. :]


End file.
